John Lindal’s Blog

Home Theater

After a lot of research, my wife concluded that JBL makes the best home theater speakers, while Denon makes the best receivers. Unlike most home theater systems that use tiny little tweeters for surround, JBL uses two pound monsters for all four satellites. We got good deals on both the speakers and the receiver, because JBL is unloading the two pounders cheap in favor of their new three pounders, and the Denon 787 is discontinued in favor of the new, and by all reports worse, Denon 788.

This presented me with the irresistible challenge of installing all of it

Thankfully, our back living room has an open beam ceiling, so there was no question of how to mount the speakers — simply bolt them to the beams. Our house is close to 100 years old, and the beams are clearly original, because drilling them was tough. I had to push hard to get the bit in, even at full speed, and for some of the holes, it came back came out smoking!

Then there was the question of cables. Wireless surround is convenient, but it suffers from interference. We finally settled on Monster Cable, which conveniently came in off white, exactly the color of our walls

It took me two half-days to hang the cables, because I wanted them to be as close to invisible as possible. My wife claims it was successful. There really is very little visible, because I hid behind the curtains on one side of the room, and the fireplace tiles and display cabinet on the other side.

I’m still searching for gold plated, color coded banana plugs so I can simplify the connections to the receiver. After that, I have to rip up all the existing wiring (TV, DVD, etc) and reroute everything through the new surge protector ($350,000 warranty!) and the receiver. And then the real fun begins, because the receiver has a massive configuration system designed to measure and compensate for all the accoustic peculiarities of the room. But I’m sure it will sound terrific once it’s all finished!

Drains

The main line plugged up in February, and again in November, so we decided we really do need a main line cleanout. The plumbers came and tried running a camera down both toilets, the kitchen cleanout, the roof vents, and the septic tank, but to no avail. The only discovery was that the rear toilet drain hits a T under our dining table. The camera refused to go past the T, and the front toilet has a trap that is too tight for the camera to get through at all. The next step is to the pump the septic tank and find the inlet T, in hopes that a camera can be run from there back towards the house to locate the junction between the main line and the front toilet drain. That’s the ideal location for a two-way cleanout, because it will allow clearing both the three inch cast iron drain and the four inch clay main line.

At least the company we used, L.A. Hydrojet, was professional enough not to charge for the three hours they spent sweating over our drains, since they were forced to admit defeat.

Second Shower

We finally have a second working shower! We hired a contractor for this one, since cutting, installing, and drilling tile is way out of my league. He did a great job at a reasonable price — Peter H. Cease, Lic #687167.

The challenge was that the tub only has one adjacent wall, and the tile only goes half way up that wall. Peter first installed tile up to the ceiling with a decent color match to the wall’s paint and then a U-shaped bar to hold the shower curtain. He even went through the trouble to find a second ceiling mount for the bar, so both corners of the U are supported, rather than just the midpoint.

And he installed a grab bar for getting out of the tub. This required drilling through the existing tile, which must be made of granite, since it was so hard!

Front Yard Lamp

Our outdoor lamp had been leaning over more and more as gravity inexorably stretched the cables, so I finally switched off the power and chopped up the entire thing. It lay there on our front lawn like a decayed corpse for several months until we finally found the perfect lamp post at Lowes. We hired an electrician/handyman recommended by our neighbor to install it, since I’m not fond of mixing and setting concrete and trying to get it level. He did a great job, and my wife decorated the concrete with stones before it dried. It looks much better than the old lamp!

Accordion Doors

It’s been a long time since my last real post because I’ve been so busy at work…

During Thanksgiving, I put up a Spectrum Via accordion door in the small door to our kitchen — which was fast and painless — and did most of the installation of a Spectrum Encore accordion door in the wide opening between the kitchen and dining room — which required trimming off 5/16 of an inch, and after I put it up, I discovered that I needed a second extension!

If you haven’t suffered the exquisite agony of having to trim an accordion door, you’re either very fortunate or you’ve missed out on an important experience — depending on whether or not you think torture builds character — because it requires completely disassembling the door, trimming each piece separately while desperately praying that you’re not taking off too little or too much, and then putting it all back together again. Thankfully, it turned out that I trimmed off just the right amount.

The search for the second extension turned into an epic quest after I discovered that the two remaining panels at the closest Lowes were defective and neither of the nearby Home Depot stores had any panels in stock. I did finally locate a Home Depot with a stock of panels, and I managed to find one in good condition, but it is unfortunately white veneer on black plastic, instead of solid white plastic like the original door and the first extension that I bought. It looks fine now, but any scratch is good to look terrible, because it will expose the black plastic underneath And this second extension uses screws of a slightly different gauge, which I discovered when I wasn’t careful enough about putting screws back in the holes from which they came…but it still all holds together, and the two doors together do an excellent job of keeping all the cooking smells confined to the kitchen!